The Mc"Clans" are In Danger

[Lachlan09]

Talking about “McDo” as they call it in the Phils, here in sunny Muscat, Oman we’ve been waiting for the opening of 3 BK outlets for the first time in nearly 10 years. Back then, there were BK’s in Muscat but they closed. The popular story went that it had something to do with rats found in a cooking area in one of the restaurants which caused a popularity nose-dive and doomed them to closure. Personally, I think that is a load of rubbish – in that case many more eating places here could be closed ! The truth was much more commercial in nature, a mix of bad Omani management and rivalries between sponsor/owner-clans.

Now that is history and they’re fitting out 3 new drive-in’s. This is where “The Oman Effect” kicks in again. The drive-in near us was due to open last September, but is still not ready. Only last week they put up the banner signage, 5 months later than planned. Fitting out a BK is hardly rocket science and should take weeks, not months. Either Omani ministry red-tape has got in the way, or the Omani owners are bad at paying contractors and suppliers (highly possible) or they even ran out of money giving them a cash flow problem for a while or else the Omani project managers are nigh on useless. – most likely a bit of all. Thank God they are so bad or else they wouldn’t need expats to run the big projects !

It shouldn’t bother me, as I’m on a diet and can’t eat BK anyway. It’s just the principle of gross inefficiency which rattles my cage and the wish to see BK kick McDo’s butt (I hate McDo but like BK - and Wendy's, Hardee's and Carl's Junior).